Seag­ulls fail to soar as Bohs clip their wings

WHILE BO­HEMI­ANS' off-field ac­tiv­i­ties have dom­i­nated the col­umn inches in re­cent months, the Da­ly­mount Park side let their feet do the talk­ing on Fri­day night as they got their league cam­paign off to win­ning ways at Bray Wan­der­ers' ex­pense.

2,500 peo­ple flocked to the Carlisle Grounds to see Jake Kelly score the first goal of the 2011 Air­tric­ity League sea­son from the penalty spot af­ter 20 min­utes.

The lead only lasted 11 min­utes though when Bo­hemi­ans hit back with a penalty of their own; Christie Fa­gan send­ing Matt Gregg the wrong way af­ter Daire Doyle had brought down Lee Dixon.

Gregg was pick­ing the ball out of the back of his net again eight min­utes later when a sen­sa­tional Kil­lian Bren­nan free­kick flew into the top cor­ner.

A su­perb, flow­ing counter at­tack in the 65th minute saw Anto Flood tap in his first goal in Bohs' colours af­ter great build-up play from Fa­gan and Stephen Traynor.

Wan­der­ers had a chance to re­duce their ar­rears in the 69th minute when John Mul­roy was felled in the penalty area but Kelly failed to dou­ble his tally as his ef­fort crashed back off the cross­bar.

And the Dublin­ers com­fort­ably saw out the re­main­der of the match to claim their first vic­tory of the sea­son.

Bray - and in par­tic­u­lar Adam Mitchell - al­most started the sea­son in tragic fash­ion. Owen Heary's header out of de­fence caught Mitchell cold and Fa­gan raced onto it and surged to­wards goal. With just Gregg left to beat, the for­mer Manch­ester United young­ster tried to take it around the shot-stop­per but Gregg got a very im­por­tant toe to the ball and Daire Doyle com­pleted the clear­ance.

The vis­i­tors came close again in the eighth minute. Bren­nan's right wing cor­ner was hooked goal­wards by Flood and the striker's im­pro­vised ef­fort was just inches away from creep­ing into the top cor­ner.

Wan­der­ers hit back in the 16th minute with a chance of their own from a cor­ner. Debu­tant Joe Ken­drick's su­perb de­liv­ery found Danny O'Con­nor and the Bray cap­tain's header was su­perbly stopped by keeper Craig Sex­ton. A mad scram­ble en­sued, but Bohs even­tu­ally man­aged to clear their lines.

Bohs de­fence may have been fre­netic on that oc­ca­sion, but it was sui­ci­dal three min­utes later. Ken­drick swung over an­other cor­ner to the back post where Ger O'Brien struck the ball with his left hand un­der pres­sure from O'Con­nor.

And Kelly got off the mark for the sea­son when he ri­fled the spot-kick into the roof of the net.

The Seasiders' cel­e­bra­tions were cut short though with Bohs equal­is­ing from the spot soon af­ter, but it was a hot­ly­dis­puted penalty. Lee Dixon played a clever one-two with Fa­gan, skip­ping past Doyle as he did so. The 30-year old then lunged in on Dixon, send­ing him crash­ing to the floor and Tom Con­nolly pointed to the spot for the sec­ond time in ten min­utes, but the foul seemed to have been com­mit­ted out­side the penalty area.

Penalty or no penalty, Fa­gan sent Gregg the wrong way to level mat­ters.

And it quickly went from bad to worse for Pat Devlin's side when Bren­nan slammed his 20-yard free-kick into the top cor­ner of the net eight min­utes later.

A sweep­ing counter-at­tack in the 65th minute then gave Fen­lon's side a two-goal cush­ion. Dixon led the charge be­fore spray­ing the ball out to Fa­gan on the right flank. The man of the match slipped a pass into Stephen Traynor in the penalty area and he quickly shipped it on to Anto Flood who swept home from ten yards.

There was to be one fi­nal thrill at the Carlisle Grounds though. Chris Shields found sub­sti­tute John Mul­roy on the right flank, he squeezed past two op­po­nents as he drib­bled into the box and then he was caught by O'Brien as he looked to skip by him. Same of­fender, dif­fer­ent end, and a dif­fer­ent re­sult, with Kelly's sec­ond penalty leav­ing the cross­bar rat­tling rather than the back of the net bulging.

Top Form: Christie Fa­gan (Bo­hemi­ans): You'll hear plenty more about this man as the sea­son pro­gresses.

Graham Kelly of Bray Wan­der­ers closes in on Ollie Cahill of Bo­hemi­ans.

Joe Ken­drick of Bray Wan­der­ers is chased by the im­pres­sive Christie Fa­gan of Bo­hemi­ans.